Sanitizing and disinfecting soap compositions comprising chlorine-based antimicrobial agent such as triclosan are known. Such compositions require rather long contact time to provide efficacious antimicrobial action. In practice, users, in particular children, do not spend long time in cleaning and as a result, cleaning with such compositions does not provide adequate prevention from surface or topical infection or adequate protection against diseases. The user, in spite of cleaning hands, is likely to have skin with relatively inadequate bacterial removal and may cause contamination of further animate and/or inanimate surfaces and lead to spreading of pathogens and consequent diseases. Users in general and children in particular who wash contaminated hands before meals with slow-acting antimicrobial compositions for relatively short time are at risk of contracting diseases. Further, many antimicrobial actives in addition to abrasives are included in oral care compositions like dentifrices but these actives generally require several minutes if not hours before effective antimicrobial action is effected. People often brush their teeth or rinse their mouth for very short period of time e.g. of the order of 1 minute or less thus making such compositions quite ineffective in providing the desired benefit.
Similarly in the area of hard surface cleaning e.g. cleaning of floors, table tops or utensils, the antimicrobial in the compositions are in contact with the substrate for less than a few minutes after which the surface is either wiped off or rinsed with water. These short time scales of cleaning action are ineffective in providing the desired benefit since most known antimicrobials commonly used in such products take several hours to provide the desired kill of microbes.
Therefore, there is a need of providing a composition that gives relatively more efficacious antimicrobial action when cleaning period is relatively small, typically about 5 minutes or less, preferably lesser than 2 minutes and in many cases less than one minute or sometimes as low as 15 seconds or lesser.
The present applicants, in WO10046238 have surprisingly found that compositions comprising selected ingredients, namely thymol and terpineol, in selective concentrations provide relatively quick antimicrobial action. They have continued their research to find more efficacious combinations of actives that not only provide the desired fast anti-microbial action but also enable this at lower concentrations. To their further surprise, they found that use of very small amounts of eugenol in combination thymol and terpineol enables the fast kinetics at much lower amount of thymol and terpineol than without eugenol.
Eugenol, terpineol and thymol are all components of essential oils and have been cited along with a host of other such essential oil components in prior publications.
JP2196718 (Kowa, 1989) discloses a liquid for external use having increased solubility and stability, containing 0.1 to 5% indomethacin and a 0.3 to 10% dissolution auxiliary as essential components, the dissolution auxiliary selected from limonene, pinene, camphene, cymene, citronellol, geraniol, nerol, linalool, terpineol, rhodinol, borneol, isoborneol, menthone, camphor, thymol, safrole, isosafrole, eugenol and isoeugenol.
JP19960080819 (Kao, 1996) discloses a composition for oral cavity, which contains the following (a) and (b) components besides (c)-(e) components. (a) capsules containing 0.1-20 wt. % of agar as a substance for forming a tunica and having an average grain size of 0.3-3 mm, (b) 0.0001-1% of more than one kind of perfumes selected from linalol, eugenol, anethole, terpineol, thymol, camphor, cinnamic alcohol, cinnamic aldehyde and cineol, (c) 0.1-1% of menthol, (d) a nonionic surfactant, and (e) an abrasive.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,613,728 (P & G, 2003) discloses a method of providing long-lasting disinfection to a hard surface, said method comprising the step of contacting said hard surface with a liquid disinfecting solution having a pH of from 2 to 6 and having low volatility, said liquid disinfecting solution comprising peroxygen bleach and an antimicrobial active selected from the group consisting of thymol, eugenol, menthol, geraniol, vertenone, eucalyptol, pinocarvone, cedrol, anethol, carvacrol, hinokitiol, berberine, ferulic acid, cinnamic acid, methyl salicylic acid, methyl salicylate, terpineol, limonene and mixtures thereof, and an anti-microbial compound having a vapor pressure of less than 0.1 mmHg when measured at 20° C., wherein said anti-microbial compound is selected from the group consisting of citric acid, benzoic acid, benzophenone, and mixtures thereof.
WO2006/053458 (Givaudan S A) discloses bactericidal formulations that come into contact with human body, particularly wash formulations including liquid soaps comprising perfume ingredients active against gram-negative bacteria.
None of the publications, cited above, teach that a small amount of eugenol when used along with a specified amount of a combination of thymol and terpineol provide for fast acting anti-microbial action, in a synergistic way.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or ameliorate at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art, or to provide a useful alternative.
Another object of the present invention is to provide antimicrobial compositions that have relatively fast antimicrobial action.